"It was Feynman's outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that revolutionized the teaching of physics around the world. 'Six Not-So-Easy Pieces', taken from these famous 'Lectures on Physics' represent some the most stimulating material from the series. In these classic lessons, Feynman introduces the general reader to the following topics: atoms, basic physics, energy, gravitation, quantum mechanics, and the relationship of physics to other topics..."--P. [4] of cover.
It's meant to be the easiest parts of his lectures but it has enough equations included (that I'm sure any physics student would understand in their sleep) to make me need a lie down after attempting to read.
Most likely there's better resources these days for understanding the basics at a simple layman level, which is all I'm interested in.
But I think I almost understand the idea behind the uncertainty principle. That's worth 5 stars on its own.
I bought this book as a refresher on topics I learned years ago for a state exam on Physics. Unfortunately, I think videos would be much better than this book for learning physics or as 'refresher courses'.
My biggest problem with the book is that for me it just didn't work. The chapters are lessons Feynman taught as a professor but I think that's where the should have stayed at, being recorded as lectures. The explanations would probably work as a lecture, but in the book I felt like they were taking too long to get to the point. I get the point some of these explanations are trying to make, there is a lot of 'building up the logic behind the experiments.' For example, the final chapter Quantum Physics explains and builds the logic of the uncertainty principle through three double-slit experiments. First using bullets, then waves of water, …
I bought this book as a refresher on topics I learned years ago for a state exam on Physics. Unfortunately, I think videos would be much better than this book for learning physics or as 'refresher courses'.
My biggest problem with the book is that for me it just didn't work. The chapters are lessons Feynman taught as a professor but I think that's where the should have stayed at, being recorded as lectures. The explanations would probably work as a lecture, but in the book I felt like they were taking too long to get to the point. I get the point some of these explanations are trying to make, there is a lot of 'building up the logic behind the experiments.' For example, the final chapter Quantum Physics explains and builds the logic of the uncertainty principle through three double-slit experiments. First using bullets, then waves of water, and finally electrons. Personally, it just strained my attention because it took too long to get to the point. For the novelty of a Feynman lecture in paper format, I think his actual lectures (found on Youtube, for example) are just better.
My second problem with it is that there are quite a few diagrams, but the text just couldn't 'keep up.' This might just be an issue with my edition, but it was quite annoying to backtrack several pages to review the diagrams while the text explained them. In the fifth chapter Gravitation, the text could not keep up with the images, sometimes referring to images three pages ahead. It's not that it's hard to follow, it's just that it's tedious in my opinion. So unfortunately, the book just didn't work for me.
Some first chapters were very good. But after that, it was somehow difficult to follow the author's ideas for me. Maybe, because the book is quite old? Or I am stupid.
This was a really great and quick read. The explanations and analogies were great. It touched on a lot of topics that I knew, but before this book I never truly understood. My favorite example is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It's something I was aware of and memorized in school, but now I feel like I understand it (to the extent it can actually be understood!) much better.
